Unbroken

My heart had become full. Of criticism. To my shame, it was criticism of a fellow pastor. He was a friend, a godly man who loved his family, preached the gospel, prayed regularly, never gossiped, and always believed the best about people. But I began to struggle with something about him. It wasn’t some secret sin. It wasn’t a double life. It was nothing “scandalous” at all, really.

“Take Me to Church” points to something that draws us all: the self-destructive worship of a person. We like the idea that we are the authority of what is good and loving. And so we use words like love and unity, and we decide what that means.

But in God’s Word, we have Jesus praying for the unity of all believers. In his prayer for his disciples, Jesus says, “Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.” This is a very theological prayer. We see that God’s people are set apart by his Word. While we easily talk about our unity in Christ, love for him and for one another, it is more difficult for the church to be theologians of the cross that he carried. Love can’t be separated from truth, and God’s people are set apart by that truth.

Too often, the church hammers away at unity, but often at the expense of diversity, forgetting the essential nature of love. The one God is united in essence and purpose, yet diverse as the triune God in complementary roles and responsibilities, connected in love. We are one with Christ, seated with him in the heavenlies, and yet distinct from Christ, who loved us and gave himself up for us. All believers comprise the one universal church, and yet each church is distinct in her make-up, uniquely bringing the gospel to bear on the life of her community.